


Wolfangel

by vanillafluffy



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Canon Divergence - Captain America: The Winter Soldier, M/M, Not Captain America: The Winter Soldier Compliant, Werewolf Bonds, Werewolf Bucky Barnes, Werewolf Mates, Werewolf Turning, Werewolves, Wolves mate for life--so do werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-26
Updated: 2018-07-26
Packaged: 2019-06-16 02:02:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15426615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vanillafluffy/pseuds/vanillafluffy
Summary: HYDRA's version of the super-soldier serum contained werewolf DNA.





	Wolfangel

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Brumeier](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brumeier/gifts).



> This is a bit different from my usual. While I was writing it, I was thinking "graphic novel/comic book".
> 
> Also, "Wolfangel" was an actual Thing during WWII. I have shamelessly usurped it (completely out of context) for my own purposes, because I really didn't want to use "White Wolf" in connection with Nazis.
> 
> Enjoy.

**Previously in “Werewolves of Marvel”:**

During WWII, both Allied and Axis powers sought to create super-soldiers. The Allies touted Captain America, their one unqualified success. HYDRA, the Nazi science division under the aegis of Dr. Armin Zola created a small squad of vicious guerrillas whose killing prowess was the stuff of nightmares. 

Unknown at that time was how Zola accomplished this feat--part of his serum was comprised of werewolf plasma. This granted his troops unprecedented speed, agility and tracking ability. However, they were also difficult to control and it was discovered that the werewolf effect could be passed on through blood as well as salivary contact, as certain civilians and enemy combatants discovered to their horror. 

In the waning days of the war, Zola was captured. His successor was brought an Allied captive who had not only been bitten, he’d lost an arm. Further research showed that he had been dosed with an earlier version of Zola’s serum. That, combined with the subsequent bite, allowed him to survive trauma which would have killed a normal human several times over. Ingeniously, Dr. Brach fitted the man with a prosthetic containing silver.

The old legends had some basis in truth: Certain proteins in werewolf DNA were discovered to react in a toxic manner to silver. A combination of drugs, brainwashing and the threat of a slow, agonizing death by silver poisoning was sufficient to keep their new asset in line.

At the close of the war: Dr. Brach surrendered himself and the asset, code-named Wolfangel, to the Russians. Dr. Brach’s fate is not known, but Wolfangel became known and feared by the intelligence community. An avenging angel, they call him, and if he is on your trail, your days are numbered. For decades, he has emerged from the shadows of the night to pick off his prey. Unlike the werewolf guerrillas, he is fully capable of rational thought, even in his hybrid form, making him the most dangerous creature on Earth. His identity is unknown.

Steve Rogers, the sickly artist from Brooklyn who was reborn as Captain America crashed a plane into the Arctic to keep its weapons from destroying New York. The super-soldier serum acted as a catalyst to enable his suspended animation. He was entombed in the ice for seventy years, emerging unchanged in a world that has changed enormously.

 

**Issue #91: Wolfangel**

Present day, a hospital in Washington, DC:

“They call him ’Wolfangel’,” Natasha tells Steve Rogers. “He’s terrifying--I know from personal experience. I was escorting a defecting Iranian scientist to safety…he somehow tracked us through three hundred miles of desert. He put a bullet in my side to slow me down, and the scientist was ripped to shreds. No, really” she says at the look of skepticism on his face. “I saw him change. He’s a big guy to begin with--then he was enormous, and definitely not human.”

“Whoever he is, it’s bad enough that he shot Director Fury. We need to find him and put him down.”

“Find him? I’m more concerned that he’ll find us.”

 

Wolfangel has been sent to hunt Natasha Romanov. A STRIKE team backs him up, but he knows by now that they are there less to help him than to take him down in the event that he goes rogue. Their leader has the kill-switch that will jam the silver spike into his flesh. Short term: excruciating pain. Long term: slow, horrible death. There are safeguards to prevent him removing it, so he does as he is instructed and pursues the redheaded woman. There is something familiar about her scent; he has encountered it before at least once--the details don’t matter. She is merely his mission.

He recognizes this city; it’s the capitol of the country where he was born. He no longer remembers how he knows this, the same way he no longer remembers many things: his name, his age, why he is what he is. So many assignments in so many countries over the years…the past is not important. He obeys orders--he is a good soldier.

They have him muzzled, which he hates. It’s to prevent inadvertant civilian casualties, but it also interferes with his sense of smell, which is intolerable.

A man interferes with his pursuit of the woman. Something about him nags at Wolfangel as they do battle. This is the worthiest opponent Wolfangel has faced in a very long time. He is strong, tireless and apparently unafraid of him. 

The hated muzzle flies off during the struggle. Wolfangel catches a whiff of the stranger’s scent…yet somehow, it isn’t strange at all…it’s warm and smells of summer and he associates it with other random smells that have no current relevance--paint, tar, chicken soup…he shakes his head, trying to clear it of his sudden confusion.

“Bucky?” the man gasps.

“Who the hell is Bucky?”

No, this is wrong. He isn’t supposed to talk to his targets or his target’s friends. He isn’t supposed to be seen without his muzzle. They’ll punish him!

Terror rises in him. The STRIKE team is closing in; let them deal with these targets. His only chance to evade punishment is to return to the Lair where HYDRA keeps him and admit failure, abasing himself in hopes of some small measure of mercy.

Mercy? He should know by now: HYDRA has no mercy.

When he is strapped into The Chair, his handler arrives. Wolfangel has known the man for…how many years? He has watched him grow old in a series of time-lapse images…Pierce’s once-fair hair reminds him of the man he fought earlier. “The man on the bridge, who was he?”

“You met him before, on an earlier assignment.” Pierce is angry with him--he failed in his mission to kill the woman. Wolfangel tries to listen to what he’s saying, but all he can hear is that startled, “Bucky?!”. That man with the familiar scent knew him, too--he knows something about him, about the past he doesn’t have….

“Wipe him!” Pierce commands.

He knows that Wiping will bring a return of the confusion about his true self…but he failed, and he’s well aware that there are many more severe punishments they could mete out. It’s painful, but at least it will be over quickly.

Before they give him the mouthguard, he murmurs, “But I knew him…”.

 

In a shocking twist, HYDRA has infiltrated SHIELD and is ready to launch helicarriers whose weaponry can decimate all those who oppose them, even predicting future threats. Captain America is among those who are attempting to stop the launch. 

Boarding the final helicarrier to swap out its guidance chip, Captain America is confronted by Wolfangel --whom he has recognized as his long-presumed dead friend, Bucky Barnes.

“Don’t do this, Bucky! You’re my friend--you’ve known me your entire life!” he pleads.

Wolfangel can’t let himself fail a second time, although all his senses are screaming at him to stop. He can’t bear the thought of punishment again. “You’re my mission!” he says, as much to himself as the other man.

They grapple for the chip when it comes loose. Although he is pinned down by a fallen girder, Wolfangel doesn’t let go, won’t let go, until the other man dislocates his shoulder. Then his hand opens, the one that is flesh and blood, and is, at some level, only human. The chip falls out.

As Captain America swiftly climbs to the platform to complete his goal, Wolfangel lies there hurting, defeated. Although the Wipe has blocked his memories, once again Captain America’s scent tugs at his synapses. It doesn’t matter. The helicarrier is going to be destroyed, and he will die with it. Even his strength is insufficient to move the huge structural segment. He has been trained to survive, but he no longer wants to. Wolfangel is weary of the constant pain, confusion and killing. 

Resigned to his fate, he could not be more surprised than when Captain America returns to his side, grabbing the girder and straining against it, muscles bulging.

Wolfangel manages to slide out from under it. The man is telling him again that they are friends, begging him to remember. 

If only it was so simple! He wishes he could remember, wishes he knew why this man’s scent (like sweet hay on a warm afternoon, and…chalk? turpentine?) is so comforting. But there is no comfort, like there is no mercy. And he cannot fail again. He strikes his shoulder against a wall, slamming it back into place

“I won’t fight you,” Captain America says, dropping his shield. It twinkles like a dime in a coin toss as it tumbles toward the river below.

Wolfangel punishes the man like he has been punished. He is upset by anger and panic and emotions he cannot name because he has never had any need for them. Then his opponent says, “I’m with you til the end of the line.”.

He stops. The words resonate in a way some of the HYDRA commands do, but this is older. This is something that stirs his very DNA.

As he stares down at the other man’s battered face, the panel of decking he’s resting on breaks away and falls toward the Potomac. Wolfangel takes a deep breath and plunges after him. There is no conscious thought involved. Some part of him that still respects HYDRA’s programming regards the action with approval: He is saving himself, which is what his masters would want. Something else, the something stirred by that elusive scent is doing what it must do, consequences be damned.

 

Captain America is unconscious, dead weight when Wolfangel finds him. 

Dragging him from the depths to the riverbank means gripping him with his metal arm, kicking hard and trying to paddle with his still-sore human arm. 

When they’re finally beached, Wolfangel is overwhelmed. The other man is unmoving. Acting on instinct too powerful to be denied, he compresses the rib cage as he’s been taught. Again and again, until his mission…his friend vomits a quantity of brackish water and begins to breathe on his own. That scent he exudes is sullied by the foul water and his precarious condition.

Guilt…that’s the word for what he’s feeling right now. Anguished, Wolfangel begins to lick the wounds on the man’s face…the world shudders…he has kissed this man’s wounds before, he

Wolfangel has long been able to control the Change, but not now. It erupts out of guilt for what he has done, rage for the ones who made him do it. He is no nearer remembering who ‘Bucky’ is, but it’s true--all of their lives--sunlight coming in through the window of a shabby room as they lay together--one heartbeat, one breath--he howls his defiance to the skies.

Let them come. He will die before he surrenders his mate.

His name is Steve. It emerges from some shadowy recess of his mind, a piece of a puzzle slipping into place. Steve needs him…he crouches down beside the fallen man, gently licking the wounds, hating the taste of the river water, which gradually becomes less noticeable as Steve’s vitality begins its resurgence. His pheromones are irresistible; Wolfangel rubs against him, sniffing, nuzzling, kissing, in the grip of ecstasy so primal he can feel it in every cell of his being. His mate…it makes no difference who the asset is, only that this man is the other half of his soul.

It takes an effort to resume his human form. He can’t protect Steve as well this way…but as he looks across the river to where the helicarriers have crashed, he can see buildings burning. In all the chaos, perhaps they will overlook him long enough for him to get Steve to safety. Of course, they can track him; they could trigger the kill-switch at any time. There is no time to waste.

“Steve,” he says urgently. “Steve, wake up.”

“Five more minutes,” mumbles the fallen hero.

“Steve, wake the fuck up. HYDRA is coming.”

Unsurprisingly, this gets his full attention.”Bucky?1”

Wolfangel half-smiles. “I don’t know who that is,” he acknowledges. “But you’re Steve. You’re my mate.”

Steve gazes at him for a long moment then smiles, a beautiful smile, like sunshine. “Never heard it put that way, but…yeah.” He reaches out slowly and covers Wolfangel’s human hand with his own. “I’m glad you remember. What was that you were saying about HYDRA?”

To know such joy, only to have it crushed! “They’ll be coming for me--I’m implanted with a tracker, so they can always find me. Or they’ll activate the kill-switch.”

“Kill-switch?” Steve repeats in horror. “What are you talking about?”

He explains about the serum, and what he is, and about how they use his weakness to control him.

“Why can’t we just take it out?”

“It’s very specialized technology. If you follow the line of the first panel below the star around to the back, there’s a tiny keyhole that takes a special key to open--what the hell?” To his astonishment, the section of ridged panels that allows access to the interior workings of his bionic arm has swung open. “How did you do that?”

Steve grins, a cocky grin that feels like coming home. “Your specialized tool is a paper clip, buddy. What am I looking for? None of this stuff is labeled.”

“If I could just see it,” he laments. “I’ve seen the schematics, I know which parts are what.”

Fumbling in his tool belt, Steve retrieves his phone. “Let’s see if Tony is right about the new Starkphone being waterproof.” He fiddles with it, then to his comrade’s surprise, the screen lights with an image of what it’s ‘seeing’--the inner workings of Wolfangel’s arm. “Where’s that damn kill-switch? Just thinking about that makes me nervous.”

“Those two orange tabs--press them together, then slide the red switch back, it should come out--” He hisses as the faint pressure is released, then Steve is triumphantly holding up a two-inch long silver spike.

“What about the tracker?” Steve is alert, as if ten minutes ago he hadn’t been at death’s door. “Can we get that?”

“I don’t know where it is. It wasn’t on the schematics; for all I know, it was surgically implanted…I know they’ve tracked me on missions, because I was punished when I deviated from a route they gave me.” Simply being free of that threat is a huge relief.

“So we’ll have to travel fast,” says Steve decisively. “I know a guy in New York who can fix anything. He’s Howard Stark’s son--do you remember Howard? No? Well, Tony--he’s the guy we’re going to see--Tony’s kind of a temperamental genius. We’ll get you to him and dollars to donuts, he can get that thing out or jam it or something. Okay, Bucky?”

The feelings that are stirring within him are confusing, but it’s different from being Wiped. He’s proud of his mate for so ably solving a problem that he’d always regarded as insoluble. Although they’re far from being safe, having the kill-switch removed has leveled the playing field considerably. And despite the dangerous journey ahead of them, he has hope that someday soon, HYDRA will have no further hold on him.

“Okay, Steve. Let’s go.”

The End

 

 _Coming Soon!_ **Issue #92: Truth and Consequences**

* HYDRA’s secrets revealed  
* The fate of Nick Fury  
* The werewolf’s curse

…

**Author's Note:**

> This is a one-shot, I have no plans to continue it.


End file.
